Fraternity Discipline

Fraternities aren’t simply vehicles for beer and video parties, as testimony by a former Sigma Phi Epsilon vice president noted on Wednesday. Luis Ortiz, who is now in medical school, was the University of Rochester chapter’s VP in 2004 and he said he was critical of Christopher Porco for being so quick to volunteer to give up his bed for the night to accommodate the fraternity’s regional director who was making a routine visit.
“I had chastized Chris for allowing that other brother to back out at the last minute,” said Ortiz who explained another fraternity member had earlier agreed to give up his bed but changed his mind.
“He just shrugged it off,” Oritz said of Porco.
The forfeited bed has been a key element of Porco’s defense — that he slept in a dorm lounge couch the night that his father was killed. Prosecutors say Porco drove home to Delmar to commit the crime while defense lawyers say he didn’t.